1. Field of Invention
The present invention is generally related to shared or common use systems where multiple types of software operate on virtual machines that are managed by system control software.
2. Description of Related Art
Common use systems have been available in the airport/airline industry for a number of years. It is only in recent history that the technology has caught up to enable the creation of a truly dynamic shared use environment.
Common use architectures required middleware to wrap around and control the airline software. Localized hardware contained images of the middleware wrapped airline software on a partition on the hard drive. Upon a request from an operator, the partition containing the software combination would boot and become an active session. The operator was required to wait for the boot to initialize the operating system then the particular company (airline) software. All peripherals were controlled by the middleware including but not limited to printers, MCR/OCR readers, magnetic stripe readers, bar code readers, boarding pass printers, ticket printers and baggage tag printers. The amount of time required to initiate a session in this configuration took several minutes.
Common use terminal equipment (CUTE) systems also required certification by the middleware vendors to validate that the airline software would operate in their middleware controlled environment. This common environment required airlines to both write their code to satisfy the middleware vendors as well as pay those same vendors to certify their software for use on the vendors' system middleware.
With the advent of shared use systems, the system control software was not required to wrap an airline application and therefore certification was not necessary. If the airline application operated in their native environment on their own local area networks (LAN), then the application would run in a shared use environment without modification. Unfortunately, these early shared use environments required boot partitions similar to the older common use systems.
With the advent of virtual machines, shared use systems can now reach their peak efficiency by creating virtual machines of the appropriate company software based on time-of-day requirements. Shared use in a virtualized environment will make the company software available near instantaneously without having to wait for the edge computing device to switch partitions and boot. Dynamically injecting the IP addressing into the virtual machine enables any edge computing device to serve any company without the issue of a limited number of company IP addresses available.